Tom Courtenay

Tom Courtenay
Courtenay in 2015
Born
Thomas Daniel Courtenay

(1937-02-25) 25 February 1937 (age 87)
OccupationActor
Years active1960–present
Spouses
(m. 1973; div. 1982)
Isabel Crossley
(m. 1988)

Sir Thomas Daniel Courtenay (/ˈkɔːrtni/; born 25 February 1937) is an English actor. After studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he achieved prominence in the 1960s as part of actors of the British New Wave. Courtenay has received numerous accolades including three BAFTA Awards, a Golden Globe Award, the Silver Bear, and the Volpi Cup for Best Actor as well as nominations for two Academy Awards, two Tony Awards, and a Emmy Award. He was knighted for his services to cinema and theatre in the 2001 New Year Honours.[1]

Courtenay earned the BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer for his role in the coming-of-age film The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962)⁠ and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in David Lean's epic Doctor Zhivago (1965). Other notable film roles during this period include Billy Liar (1963), King and Country (1964), King Rat (1965), and The Night of the Generals (1967).

For his performance in the 1983 film adaptation of the play The Dresser, in which he reprised the role of Norman he originated both on the West End and Broadway, Courtenay won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor and received Academy and BAFTA Award nominations. His later roles include Last Orders (2001), Nicholas Nickleby (2002), Quartet (2012), 45 Years (2015), and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018).

He received two British Academy Television Awards for his performances in the television film A Rather English Marriage (1998) and the first series of the crime drama Unforgotten (2015) as well as a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for the PBS miniseries Little Dorrit (2008).

  1. ^ United Kingdom list: "No. 56070". The London Gazette (Supplement). 30 December 2000. p. 1.